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On a nasty night, Christmas Eve 1965, members of my family walked into my father’s hospital room. We had just returned from my grandparents’ home, where we had celebrated a Swedish smorgasbord, caroled and opened presents. The sideboard boasted turkey, meatballs, limpa bread, inlagd sill, lutfisk, spritz cookies and svensk plum pudding. But this year it all looked a little gray and lackluster. Usually the children went to bed after dinner and were awakened at midnight to open gifts until 2 a.m. But this year we opened presents right after dinner so we could go to see Dad.

Whether Mary was reading or spinning or planning her wedding, the annunciation came as an interruption.

John the Baptist baptized Jesus of Nazareth. The synoptic Gospels all say so, and the kerygma in Acts connects the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with that baptism. But although Mark seems to find it quite right that Jesus should have been among those who heeded John’s preaching, all the other evangelists seem discomfited by the suggestion that Jesus was somehow a disciple of this other preacher.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Like a starter’s pistol, this brief first verse rings out and Mark’s narrative is off and running.

We may take the chain of phrases in this verbless sentence simply as an announcement of what is next—a title that is followed immediately by the headlong story.